this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 72 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

The chances of this actually being connected is probably near zero (since rising dizziness is global, but datacenters are mostly in few countries), but still felt funny enough to post.

Randomly stumbled upon this while researching why are so many people around lately feeling dizzy.

[–] craftrabbit@lemmy.zip 36 points 6 days ago (4 children)

I didn't even know dizziness was on the rise! What did you find?

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 42 points 6 days ago (2 children)

If I were to guess, probably heat stroke due to rising temperatures. Which, if true, would also be worsened by having more data centers

[–] seaplant@slrpnk.net 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It looks like the rate of searches starts going up around January 2026 though, middle of winter in the northern hemisphere. Unless Australia was having a heat wave? They're probably prone to dizziness anyway being upside down all the time

[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 days ago

Yeah, and their toilets flush the wrong way too. That's gotta make a person dizzy, I mean our bodies are 80% water. Although Australians are probably more like 60% water if we're being honest

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I would have guessed latent response to bioaccumulation of lead from leaded gasoline, or increased CO2 in the (local) atmosphere

[–] Osprey@lemmy.world 20 points 6 days ago

Stress or anxiety can also cause dizziness.

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Nothing solid. Imma about to put on my tinfoil hat and start looking at the Russian satellites. Realistically I'm way over my head here and I hope someone else notices the weird trend. The only reason I started looking around is because I feel slightly dizzy for the past 3 months and decided to ask around. Surprisingly alot of people are experiencing the same thing. I'm from Baltics. All health checkups return perfectly fine.

[–] snw@feddit.nl 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it's interesting, in dutch Google trends, "dizziness" has a similar graph but "duizeligheid", the Dutch translation for it, is a flat line

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 4 points 6 days ago

Interestingly enough, in my language (Latvian), medical term is "Vertigo". Out of 5 years, the term had most searches (100) on April 2026.

[–] CannonFodder@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

'Over my head' haha

[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Maybe rising CO2 levels? Just guessing.

[–] Zwiebel@feddit.org 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Post covid effects? I've been dizzy often since then

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 5 days ago

severe upper respirtory can affect your vestibular system, causing vertigo. i did get balance problem one time from a pretty bad flu infection, but never covid.

[–] RamenJunkie@midwest.social 14 points 6 days ago

You ever spin in a circle? You do it a few times you don't really notoce, you do it a lot, younget dizzy.

The earth has been spinning in a lot of cirxles, and we are starting to cross into the "do it a lot" range of spins.

-- Calvin's Dad

[–] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Actually there is a proven causal connection:

Infrasound.

Data centers make a lot of that, and that does cause/exacerbate dizziness and disorientation.

Now, what proportion of increasing dizziness is caused by more data centers?

Impossible to tell from this meagre data set, likely an insubstantial amount... my money would be on long covid + its really fucking hot more often.

EDIT: derp, ivan beat me to it.

[–] neaptide@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Please cite some sources that show that infrasound causes/exacerbates dizziness or disorientation (or see my other comments in this thread). There is no conclusive evidence to support negative health effects from infrasound.

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 56 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Holy shit, dizziness causes data centers?!

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The delay implies on the other direction. Let's see if dizziness reduces a bit in 6 months.

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

But it really doesn't.

You could replace number of data centers with total number of Taylor Swift songs released and get that same idea. Taylor Swift music existing causes dizziness, and it must be stopped.

Or you could replace number of data centers with "Sean Connery alive?" and decide dizziness has been going up since he died. He was somehow guarding the world against becoming dizzy, and we lost that protection when he passed. :/

Putting two random things on a chart like this doesn't actually show or imply anything, other than that the person who made it likely wants you to believe there's some kind of connection.

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[–] leds@feddit.dk 12 points 5 days ago
[–] drolex@sopuli.xyz 32 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's actually

Causation causes correlation

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Correlation causes causation.

[–] some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Causation is correlated with causes

[–] xzinik@feddit.cl 1 points 5 days ago

correlation is causiated with correlations

[–] ivan@piefed.social 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Infrasound. ~~Proven~~ Possible (>100dB is absolutely harmful though, lower levels are object of studies now and testing on humans yielded inconclusive results) negative impact on people's health and general wellbeing, waves travel quite far and have high penetration, and data centers are absolutely the source of it with all the fans and pumps.

Not saying that there 1:1 causation here, but having a data center around will absolutely make you miserable, and dizzy too.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago

Has it been proven? I see articles that suggest pathways or mechanisms.

But when I looked for a double blind study with controls, they do not find any effects at all. Arguably the majority of studies are around 8 hour periods or sleep period, not 24 hour exposure. But you would think they would find something. They did hearing tests, blood test, brain activity tests, and emotional response "feeling" scores. It just isnt there conclusively.

People started doing a lot of this research because of the wind turbines, which also are very loud, run as long as their is wind, and produce infrasound.

Don't get me wrong: I am not defending putting loud constant noise machines near people, this should be part of a zoning regulation. That seems bad enough, infrasound or not.

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 9 points 6 days ago (5 children)

How far does that actually travel, and how does that compare to other bad stuff that has been around longer, like refineries or power substations or whatever?

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

data centres have been around for decades as well, I believe it's the new hyper scaler data centres that possibly have this infrasound thingo

But that's nothing related to a google trend graph of dizziness and data centres, that's as the OP says, random

These are great:

https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

[–] foo@feddit.uk 4 points 6 days ago

Spurious shmurious! The causation here is clear: eating butter generates wind farms. Eat more butter to save the planet everyone! It's undeniable science!

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Dammit people would you stop commenting on Technology Connections videos? I can't afford it!

[–] erev@lemmy.world 8 points 6 days ago

When datacenters are being powered by unregulated natural gas generators then it has a massive impact

[–] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago

Where I live there's a refinery, about ten years ago they changed the burners on the tall torches for a new kind that burn apparently cleaner but they make a lot more noise. It is 6km away with no direct line of sight, the low pitch rumble makes some of the windows in my house rattle.

[–] Setiyeti93@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] Zagorath@quokk.au 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] neaptide@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

I’m a big Benn Jordan fan but he missed the mark on this one. See this detailed rebuttal. Sniping between the author and Jordan on Blue Sky aside, he makes a lot of good points about how the research does not show negative health impacts related to infrasound.

[–] ivan@piefed.social 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So, you may have noticed that 5 GHz Wi-Fi has smaller coverage area than 2.4 GHz.

It works that way all the way down to infrasound, which is <20 Hz, and natural examples would be whale communications (thousands of kilometers) or volcano eruptions (infrasound wave from Krakatoa eruption lapped around entire globe multiple times).

As for human factors - basically any big industrial tech object is gonna be the source of ultrasound. So it's kind of safe to assume that infrasound from data centers may be "heard" from at least several kilometers away. Dunno how it compares to refineries and power substations - but they're also source of that.

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 6 days ago

At night I could hear a train idle from a kilometer away through town easily. That was still in the audible range, not infrasound, and also it was literally just the engine idling, not the train being driven - not super loud even if standing next to it. A bit louder than a car.

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[–] tonyn@lemmy.ml 14 points 6 days ago (4 children)
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[–] AnnaFrankfurter@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I mean f**k AI and massive datacenters near residential areas but I think some of this could be nocebo

[–] alt_xa_23@midwest.social 1 points 4 days ago

Conclusion: datacenters are caused by dizziness

[–] TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

Over 30 years in data centers, no dizziness. I do have a deep contempt on the amount of waste and it has grown over those 30 years...

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